It's Super Effective (podcast)

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It's Super Effective is a Pokémon-focused podcast hosted by Steve Black Jr., also known by his initials SBJ, and is the flagship show of PKMNcast.com. It's Super Effective began on July 26, 2010, two days after the launch of the website, which began as pokemonpodcast.com.

Podcast

Segments

ExtremeSpeed - Steve and occasionally another cast member grill another cast member (usually a new guest) with a string of questions, usually pertaining to a personal preference between two Types, Pokémon, or Items.

Featured Team - Steve and the cast give comments and constructive criticism on a listener's submitted team of Pokémon. Steve has said that this is reminiscent of a similar feature in Nintendo Power magazines he read in his childhood.

Pokémon of the Week - Steve and the cast usually end the show with talking about one Pokémon in particular. This sometimes relates to the weekly articles on the website. The chat ranges between facts of the Pokémon, moveset recommendations, and sometimes debates on whether or not the Shiny coloration is cool.

Guests

These people have made one or two appearances on the show, either as a co-host or as an interviewee.

Live episodes

It's Super Effective has featured various live shows since it debuted. The first live show took place on BlogTalkRadio for episode 25 and lasted almost three hours. Users called in during the show to talk with Black and Aaron Spriggs. A chat was also active during the recording where fans could ask questions and participate. The second live show was episode 35. This episode was a panel at the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo where Black and crew talked in front of a room of over fifty people. Another BlogTalkRadio show was done for episode 52 and featured Black and Kidd Starck. To celebrate ISE's second anniversary, episode 84 featured Black talking about the past success of the website and podcast. The last live show to take place was episode 87. While no one was allowed to call in, listeners instead listened to commentary from Black and another friend named Vinnie as they watched Destiny Deoxys through BlogTalkRadio.

Episode 100

The one hundredth episode of It's Super Effective debuted on New Year's Eve 2012. The episode was five hours long and featured ten interviews with almost all of the main cast members, each interview lasting anywhere between 20 to 30 minutes. Music and over twenty fans' voicemails were featured in between the interviews to tie the show together. A couple throwback segments from older shows were included. After episode 100 was published, the show took two weeks off.

Podcast art

Episodes 1 - 100

Artwork features Ken Sugimori art of Gengar and is derived from Red and Blue's box art.

Episodes 101 and onwards

The redesign of the podcast art was to tie into the redesign of the site. For legal reasons and to ever be featured in iTunes "Staff Picks", the change was also made to get away from using copyrighted imagery including the Pokémon logo and Ken Sugimori artwork.

Related podcasts

Critical Hit

A video podcast that is either consisting of various Pokémon-related things happening in Black Jr.'s life or a video version of the main audio podcast, depending on the episode. In the former's case, the podcast finishes off with a Pokémon-related YouTube video before the credits.

Leftovers

Steve's uncensored side project. Leftovers was hosted by Black Jr. and his friend Chris. Leftovers dealt with a more adult side of the Pokémon fandom, but is currently on hiatus. Also called "It's Super Offensive."

Reception

It's Super Effective is currently the most popular Pokémon podcast on iTunes and Zune. "It's Super Effective" was pulled from iTunes after having to move their servers in July 2012. Once the server move was complete, "It's Super Effective" peaked at the #2 "Top Podcasts" in the "Video Game Podcasts" in the iTunes Store. On the Zune Marketplace, the podcast peaked at #55 on the service's "most subscribed podcasts" list and #48 on its "most subscribed audio podcasts" list.[1] It became the leading Pokémon podcast after The Pallet Tribune's WTPT - Pokémon Radio ended production in 2010, the same year that ISE debuted. It won the third, fourth, and fifth annual Shorty Awards (2011 - 2013) in the community-created category of "The Best Podcast in Social Media"[2] with 50, 145, and 67 votes, respectively. For the 2013 Shorty Awards, host Steve Black Jr. (under his Twitter handle @draggingalake) placed second in the category of #podcaster with 747 votes as of March 1, 2013. While Black did not receive a trophy at the Shorty Awards, he tweeted a picture of the #podcaster trophy about 2 weeks after the award ceremony that he received in the mail.[3]

It's Super Effective sits with 333 user reviews in the iTunes Store putting it at a solid five stars.

Since debuting on Stitcher Radio in April 2012, the show has had a total listening time of over 220,000 minutes alone from listeners using the service.[4]

Competition

"It's Super Effective" debuted at the end of the P.U.C.L. and WTPT - Pokémon Radio rivalry. ISE talked about both Pokémon Monday and WTPT on various episodes but never mentioned P.U.C.L directly. P.U.C.L. then called out Black on episode 90 during reading their fan mail. After that point, it was mentioned on ISE that Black stated it was "funny" that P.U.C.L. thought they "won" at being the #1 Pokémon podcast because ISE, in only a couple of months, passed both these establish shows in popularity and listeners. ISE not only broke into the top 100 most downloaded video game podcasts, in iTunes, when the other show did not, but ISE sits with over 10x as many Facebook fans and 5000+ Twitter fans. Since then not much has been said between theses shows. Bouncing Wailord, on the other hand, has never said anything bad about ISE or the staff of the show. In fact, most of the ISE cast has appeared on their episodes.

Awards

Year

Award

Category

Notes

Outcome

2011

Shorty Award

Best Podcast in Social Media (3rd Annual)

@pokemonpodcast - 50 Votes

Won

2012

Shorty Award

Best Podcast in Social Media (4th Annual)

@pokemonpodcast - 145 Votes

Won

2013

Shorty Award

Best Podcast in Social Media (5th Annual)

@pokemonpodcast - 67 Votes

Won

2013

Shorty Award

Best Podcaster in Social Media (5th Annual)

@draggingalake - 747 Votes to finalize 2nd Place (No Winner)

Nominated

2013

Milwaukee A-List

Best Radio Personalities

@draggingalake - Top Five Finalist

3rd Place

Staff

Website

Current

Staff members that are listed in italics are also current recurring hosts of It's Super Effective.

Steve Black Jr.

Creator/host of the It's Super Effective podcast and webmaster of PKMNcast.com